7 Things You Can Do To Help Lift Depression

Depression can be crippling and can compress the joy to be found in daily life. Lets look at some ways to lift the shadow of depression and train the brain to be more positive.

7 Ways to Lift Depression

1. Daily Exercise: Go for a walk, a swim, attend an exercise class or go to the gym. Spending at least 20 minutes a day.

2. Gratitude and be Grateful: At night time before sleeping, recall three things from your day that you are grateful for. Our normal night lens is the news that trains our brains to scan for all the negative things that has happen to us. Just using that same lens to scan for the positive things and being grateful for those will change the way the brain scans and will increase happiness. This change in behaviour requires this exercise to be done over a period of 21 days as with most brain training programs.

3. Journaling: The power of writing. Write down ONE positive thing that happened to you today. This exercise will build up the brain scanning technique.

4. Meditation and Mindfulness: Take time out of your day to go into self. Slow down and simply breathe paying attention to your breath. Or spend time in Nature paying attention to the leaves, trees, sky, the birds or the ocean. Start with 10 minutes a day or join a meditation class.

5. Do random acts of kindness without an expectation of anything in return. Open the door for someone, send a thoughtful text message or email, smile at strangers.

6. Affirmations: Say daily positive affirmations, beginning with I AM, I Am Happy, I Am Healthy, you can add any amount to this. Say these affirmations with feelings and total commitment.

7. Smile: When we smile, we release serotonin into the brain, the happy hormone, the more we smile, the more serotonin we release, the more released the happier you become. The other great thing with smiling is, when you smile other people smile as well and so you are helping others in the act of smiling.

This list to the undepressed is easy. But when you are in a depressed state or negative mind set it’s harder. So take one step at a time. Do one item from the list each day and add a new item each other day and soon you will be following the steps to a happier and enriched life.

Declan Coyle wrote ” The evidence is compelling that true happiness depends not on fame or fortune, but on how your brain processes what each day brings”

We process and interpret what each day brings by the state of mind we are in at that time. The stronger and more positive we are each day. The less the negative impact and visa versa.